I don't mean socially; I mean off the Earth and between the planets.
There are a few really good ways, as invented by perspiring authors in
science-fiction magazines. And if I miss any, which is extremely
doubtful, remember that I'm writting from memory, that I hadn't read
_all_ the scientifiction magazines from 1926 and on, and that I am not
going to go researching through the tremendous stacks of old
scientifiction magazines that I now have in my possession.
Now, what DO I mean by THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND? Briefly, by the word
BEST, I mean so pseudo-logical that you could almost leave off the
"pseudo". See? (No)
For instance, Jack Williamson's geodesic machinery, wherein he warps
space around, appeals to me as being pure fairy tale stuff. He just
gives a lot of verbal hocus-pocus, and runs off reams of litterary
fertilizer until we throw up our hands in disgust and say; "O.K., O.K.,
Jack, to hell with that, let's get on with the 'story'. We'll grant you
that you _can_ get around."--And we're willing to grant E.E. Smith the
same privilege. He _DOES_ get around--anybody disagree? The question is;
how? Oh, by useing "X", and the inertialess drive. The same with brother
Burroughs. What do we care if dear old John Carter "yearns" himself to
Mars? He gets there, and we are happy, or were happy.
So, we exclude all those from THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND. They are very
nice and convenient to get people places; but, when we run across one of
the "BEST WAYS" we often wonder if it REALLY WOULDN'T be possible,
provided----. Of course, that word "provided" is the catch--the reason
why we really aren't going around that way.
Again--So, way back there, Edmond Hamilton, and a hundred others, have
used the idea of _light-preasure_ in an attempt to get away from
rockets. But he didn't tell us how, scientifictionaly. In direct
contrast to vauge statements made regarding the use of _light-preasure_
as propulsion, I remember the MOON CONQUORS, by R.H. Romans, in a 1931
(I think) (You're right, 4SJ) quarterly. You've seen radiometers. The
things with black and white vanes placed in a vacuum. The theory is that
the opposite shades cause unbalanced light preasure, so that the vanes
go around and around. Romans invented a pseudo-scientifically logical
way to use _light-preasure_, once he got his ship in space. His
scientist invented a compound of _absolute black_. (Which is also
obtainable in a darkroom) A small square of darkroom--or, I mean,
absolute black painted on the posterior of the ship, and regulated at
will, gave the same ship quite respectable speeds. Certainly it won't
work outside of a story--but, I'm talking scientifictionally. Romans
used his imagination, and we all had fun.
In the same story, Romans used a swell device to get the ship off the
earth. He used a mile-long tube, composed of circular magnets. It was a
_magnetic gun_. Each magnet pulled the ship towards it, and then, as the
ship passed it, the magnet's poles were reversed, and made to repel the
ship. With each magnet at maximum charge, either pulling or pushing the
ship, according to whether it was in front or behind the latter, the
same erupted from the tube with the necessary 7 M.P.S. velocity of
escape, and so was off on the way to the moon. What's wrong with the
idea? I dunno.
John W. Campell (Jr.) used to have brainstorms: in fact, he invented
_two_ of THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND. One, in the first of the ARCOT,
MOREY, and WADE stories, "PIRACY PREFERRED", was that of molecular
motion. All the little molecules in a bar of metal go madly around in
every possible direction. If you could invent, as Campbell did in the
story, an electro-magnetic vibration that would force all the mollecules
to go in the same direction, then the bar of metals would go in that
direction, since it would be them. So Mr. Campbell hooked the thing up
to his ship, and off he went to Venus, or some other planet. Well, it
_would_ work, wouldn't it, _provided_ (ah yes!) you could make all the
mollecules go into one directional flow.
And the other brainstorm was when Aarn Munro, in the MIGHTIEST MACHINE,
decided that momentum and velocity were wave formations, and therefore,
one should be able to _tune into them_! (Anyone should be able to think
up a simple theory like that.) Not a bad WAY TO GET AROUND--in a
science fiction story.
Back in 1930, or some such year, Charles R. Tanner wrote THE FLIGHT OF
THE MERCURY, in the old WONDER STORIES. In that story he told you just
how to go ahead and make an ETHERPROPELLER, provided there is such a
thing as ether, and Osmium B. The theory is: you use water screws, air
propellers, and so why not an ether propeller? Put a cork in motionless
water. Start a wave motion in the water with your hand. If the length of
the wave is greater than the diameter of the cork, the cork just bobs up
and down and stays where it is. If the lengths of the waves are shorter
than the diameter of the cork, the waves go around it, and the cork still
stays right where it is. If the length of the wave is exactly the
diameter of the cork, tho cork rides right off, in the trough of the
wave, at the same speed as that of the wave formation. Now invent an
electro-magnetic vibration--by useing the metal Osmium B--exactly the
length of a Copper atom. Make your ship of copper, putting the ether
propeller, that which causes vibration in the ether, at the end of the
ship, and presto! all the copper atoms move along in the trough of the
ether waves, at the same speed as the other waves, which is the speed of
light. And, Mr. Tanner is off for Mars, in a super-plausibly
scientifictional way.
HELL SHIP, in last year's ASTOUNDING, Arthur J. Burks put forth an idea
which had been discussed by engineers before he had ever used It. They
just didn't know how to do it. Mr. Burks did--didn't he write the story.
At least, the idea gave him more earthly benifit than it gave the
engineers. Maybe he thinks he invented it--I don't know, nor does it
matter: He used it, the idea of gravatic lines of force, forming a
spider web throughout the solar system. With the proper machinery,
which he ascribed with good attention to detail, you could crawl up
those lines of force like a spider. This idea is so plausable that it
might be placed in the same catagory as rocket propulsion, which is
fact.
THE MOTH, in this year's ASTOUNDING, contains another of those ideas of
interplanatary locomotion which I call one of THE BEST WAYS TO GET
AROUND. Don't worry, I'm not pointing to myself with pride. I just wrote
the story, Charles R. Tanner conceived the idea. He tossed it off
paranthetically one night, and promptly forgot about it. The idea----If
all objects are in motion, according to the Lorentz-Fitzgerald
contraction theory, lose length in the direction of motion, why couldn't
an artificialy produced cause instantaneous motion, why couldn't an
artificialy produced contraction cause instantaneous motion,
proportional to length-loss? Not a thing in the world against it, my
friends, all you have to do is to find a way to cause the artificial
contraction of the ship in question. Of course, in my story, I invented
a force-field----very handy when you're in a tight spot!----which caused
tho electrons to flatten out. This force acted on the ship and
everything within. Therefore, any speed up to a little below that of
light could be obtained, and that bogey man so often ignored in
scientifiction, acceleration, was disposed of at the start, since there
was nothing that had a tendancy to stay behind. There is the real
inertialess drive, which E.E. Smith talked of, but never used.
(Paranthetically: When Charles R. Tanner saw the story containing his
idea in print, he became enthused, and promptly invented and named all
machines used in the process, discovered a new and ultimate particle
called the "graviton", that which makes the proton 1846 times heavier
than the electron, and practically drew plans for the force field which
caused the contraction. When he finished we knew exactly _how_ to obtain
speeds far exceding both those of Smith and Campbell. Our inventions
were plausable, and they'd work, provided----)
I've just about reached the end of the list, though there are one or two
others that might be mentioned right here at the tail end of the
article. Jules Verne, I suppose, has to be credited with the first ship
fired from a canon, in ONCE AROUND THE MOON. Wells takes the bow for
gravity plates, which Willy Ley so neatly disposed of, only he called it
"cavorite" in THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON., and Roy Cummings used it
effectivly in AROUND THE UNIVERSE (and a hundred others). In a story in
the old WONDER Donald Wolheim put his rocket ship on a huge wheel,
rotated the wheel and flung it off into space. Fair, except that the
acceleration would be killing.
AND THAT'S ABSOLUTLY ALL THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND. Unless there are
some of those which I haven't heard of. If you know of some, I would
like to be enlightened.
--ROSS ROCKYLYN
--THE SYMPHONIC ABDUCTION--
"I suppose you've heard about what happened to my brother Jerry?" Ray
Spencer asked me; I shook my head. "The whole family was worried about
him for a while: couldn't tell whether he had sleeping-sickness, or
what. All we knew was that he'd gone coma listening to some phonograph
records when he was alone in the house. Perhaps the intense emotional
effect of the music, plus its stentor, was the cause.
"When I returned home, he lay cold on the floor in front of the
radio-phonograph. The automatic release had shut off the record, but the
current was still on, and the volume dial was turned full strength.
Nothing I could do would rouse my brother, so--scared--I put him to bed
and called a doctor, who had him taken to a hospital for observation. No
one could determine what was the trouble, and since we couldn't afford
to keep him at the hospital indefinitely, we brought Jerry back home.
And although it wasn't exactly appropriate, I couldn't help remembering
the story of the Sleeping Beauty whenever I looked into his room and saw
him, apparently only napping.
"Then one day I heard him--still in his trance--whisperingly singing.
The indistinct notes were reminiscent of one of Chaikovsky's ballet
pieces. I tried vainly to wake him. He sighed on and on until the faint
breath of a voice softened into silence....
"When at last he did awake, I had been listening to some continental
communiques in the adjoining room, with the door open so that I could
look in on him in case of emergency. The program ended and was followed
by concert music. I don't care much for symphony, so I arose and went to
the radio to switch it off. At the same time, Jerry stirred: I heard his
bed creak. Turning to look his way, I twisted the wrong dial, and the
music thundered: my brother began to toss on his bed. Disregarding the
racket for a moment in excitement at seeing him move, I ran in to him,
shouting, shaking him a little. His hands groped, found mine, and clung
to them. Painfully he endeavored to raise himself, dropped back
perspiring and panting. Then he screamed--horribly!--as if all Hell's
devils were shovelling all Hell's coals on him, and opened his eyes, his
face taut with dread. He recognized me. In a moment I had soothed him
back to normalcy. He was perfectly all right from then on.
"Or at least we thought so. But since you're so interested in
metaphysics, get him to tell you about the vision he had during his
catalepsy. He won't feel embarrassed; he's told it to others. Just say
that I mentioned it to you." Ray had finished. Later, when I chanced
upon Jerry Spencer, I brot him up to my apartment for dinner. The meal
over, he smiled at my query concerning his comatose dream, and related:
"None in my family are as interested in music as I: my belief is that to
realize its full magic you must leave off talking--better still, listen
to it alone--and, closing your eyes, open your mind to it. Relax--forget
yourself. All of my folks poke fun at me when I sit on the floor by the
radio during the concert broadcasts, my ears close to the speaker. But
that is the only way by which I can really enjoy music. The very
loudness, blasting at my hearing, emphasizes the tone-magic,
overwhelming everything else. And sometimes, if my eyes are shut, I can
see fantastic dream worlds, fiery pageants inspired by thundrous
harmonies.
"I had never dared to turn on the amplifier as loud as I'd have wished.
My family said that it would annoy the neighbors. So that day when I was
alone at home, I thot that then was my chance, if ever, and proceeded
to play my favorite record; the first scene of Chaikovsky's SWAN LAKE
ballet, as loudly as possible. The sound was not so deafening
as--maddening, or better still, intoxicating. How I Loved it! I sat
cross-legged, eyes shut, dreaming, at last absolutely happy. More:
ecstatic.
"The first notes were like an invitation emanating from a lost
dimension, calling me, wheedling. Promising haven, peace. The call of
the unknown: not the lure of dashing adventure but of mystery, mournful
sorcery, epic splendors....
"Deep in my heart there's a sort of innate Slavic sadness which
responded to the music's plaint, and my thought traveled with the melody
effortlessly on and on. The warm darkness of my closed eyes lightened to
infinities of cold, deep-blue emptiness, through which I felt myself
gliding as the theme progressed.
"Each harmonic burst, every wailing echo, dominated me. My thought was
borne farther and farther like a leaf in a tempest.... There were base
chords which made my throat quiver, and tears burned under my lowered
eyelids. I felt a tingling at my shoulders, and with eyes still closed
but discerning by a sort of dream-vision, I half-consciously turned,
beheld luminous yellow--draperies?--fluttering behind me, bouying me:
like scarf-wings, whipping comet-tails.
"An instinctive transient fright gripped me, admonishing me to withdraw
from this blue region into the calid darkness from which I had come--but
the melody's urge was stronger than my feeble urge to retreat. The azure
became flecked with diamond points of light which augmented into great
white moons, and from one to another in a vast network rayed pulsing
filaments, vascular channels of fluid light.
"A stupendous chorus of clear unhuman voices, as from diamond throats,
emanated from these linked moons, of which the music which had conveyed
me was only a distorted, ghostly echo.... In tangible waves this greater
music rippled around the webbed moons, beating against me as though to
force me away on its tides I know not whither.
"Beneath me was a limitless tract of grey slime which rose and fell
torpidly as with the breathing of a somnolent subterranean thing. The
moonlight burned brightly on it, and crawling across it from some remote
place came--trees?--snaky-rooted things whose prehensile branches bore,
instead of leaves, flexible lenses.... They left behind them red trails
on the slime, and excrementory ribbons of thin blue vapor streamed from
their topmost appendages. Occasionally they paused to feed, focussing
their lenses upon the gelatinous ground, which became luminously white
under the concentrated light. The sucking mouths of the serpentine roots
absorbed this matter, and red viscosity seeped into the eaten places,
greying rapidly under the moon's effulgence, chemically affected by it.
"And the trees mated. Gynandrous, they converged in pairs or groups,
pressing close together, thrusting their limbs into one enormous
cluster, aggregating their lenses into a series of complex, compact
forms ... shuddering with a violent ardor.... From erectile
protuberances rimming the lenses ruby liquid spurted, bursting with
incandescence under the condensed moonlight.
"Spent, drooping, the trees separated, and the radiant orgasmic matter
drifted lightly down to the slime, burning fitfully as the trees moved
away indifferently.
"Apparently these flickering radiances fed, for gradually they grew,
dulling, becoming opaque, substantial----thrusting out probing roots,
developing limbs, wandering like their parents. They snailed onward out
of sight, all of them.
"Silently, a phosphorescent green river raced like a bolt of furcate
lightning over the green wastes. It was composed not of water but of
myriad tiny luminous crawling insects. A conscious river, altering its
tortuous course at will, small streams deviating from the main body and
meandering erratically, then rejoining the general current. This river's
end drew into sight, flashed under me and into the distance, leaving
fast-greying red paths on the slime.
"The moon's music assailed me; simultaneously I felt those man-measures,
which had carried me so long, cease, leaving me without a link to my own
world--helpless against the inexorable tide of the lunar melody, which,
bursting more loudly, swept me higher, through an interstice of the
circulatory web, into blue infinity. And there it left me; fading
ripples of it would lap me, but were too dissapated then to sweep me
farther.
"I floated aimlessly in the void, it seemed for ages, less a body than a
mind, aware of neither hunger nor thirst nor ill of any sort other than
a dreadful sapping weariness.
"There was no way of reckoning time, but after an eternity of loneliness
and self-boredom, I heard a glissando of mellow tintinabulations. A
troop of small stars flashed toward me like a scattered handful of
sparkling white gems, whirling in interweaving dance of enchantment,
tinkling glad clear tunes like the babbling of crystal brooks. The
joyous, youthful essence of their song so charmed me that I forgot my
weariness and vocally ventured to imitate it.
"At last they broke their circle and swept away, single-file, out of
sight, diminishing with distance.
"For awhile I hummed their song, but with every repetition it lost some
of its starry quality and gained a human-ness, earthiness,
animalism--until it impressed me no longer beautiful, and I was
silent.... Wearily the sluggish ages passed ... in the illimitable blue
solitudes....
"Eventually I heard the man-music, again like a summons--its vibrations
piercing the moon-net, receding, drawing me with it. Its power increased
with every unit of retregression, dragging me with it. Over the wastes
of slime it dragged me, all in a fraction of seconds. Wind tore at me,
racketing in my ears, drowning music of both moons and man.
"In a flash of cataclysm, of cosmic pandemonium, the moons, jostled out
of their places by my abrupt passage through the web, strained apart,
snapping their pulsant filamental arteries. White, searing drops of
blood of light oozed from the severed ducts, hissing as they fell, and
splashed on the slime, which heaved torturedly. The crawling trees
reared upon their writhing roots, flailing their lensed limbs, and the
phosphorescent rivers halted suddenly, piling into swiftly
disintegrating mounds.
"The rain of light blood thinned and ceased: the moons dimmed and
plunged earthward, lusterless. As they touched the tempestuously tossing
slime, it shrieked stridently, deafeningly--_cosmically_! An outcry
voicing all life's inherent dread of the horror of pain and death, which
arose from all sides, like an auditory vise, tightening upon and
crushing me. The blue chaos was wiped away by utter blackness; the
shriek weakened, ceased.
"I opened my eyes, shut them--dazzled by daylight, and opened them
again, but cautiously. My brother Ray was standing over me, shaking me,
calling my name ... AND IT WAS I WHO HAD SCREAMED!"
as i remember----
[Illustration]
As I remember, August Derleth wrote, a time back: "My personal favorite
of the Lovecraft stories is THE RATS IN THE WALL, followed by DUNWICH
HORROR, COLOUR OUT OF SPACE, THE OUTSIDER, WHISPERER IN DARKNESS." H.P.L.
liked MUSIC OF ERICH ZANN as well as anything he did, COLOUR next.
Donald Wandrei is busy in St. Paul writing plays and shorts. "My average
day brings me anywhere from ten to fifty letters that must be answered."
As I remember one night in Coney Island found seven strange looking
fellows, fans and authors, crowded into a car for a posed picture. Ross
Rocklynne, freshly freckled by a New Yawk sun, at the steering wheel,
Jack Agnew at his side with Mark (I'm makin' my mark in pulps) Reinsburg
and immediately in back of Rocklynne a fellow with too much hair, a tan
that would make an Ethiopian blush, and teeth, Bradbury, augmented by
the humorously verbose Erle Korshak, the professorly nice Bob Madle and
one V. Kidwell. I recall also a night at Mort Weisinger's home during
July with Rocklynne, Ackerman, Morojo, Hornig, Binder, Schwartz, Darrow
and again Bradbury. A picture was taken that night and the only ones
with decent smiles were Ackerman and the under-done personality who
edits this magazine. Hornig looked strangely thoughtful with his hand to
his chin, Mort had a cigarette drooping from his lip and Darrow,
Schwartz and Binder all were lost in profound contemplation of the
little birdie which Mort's brother held. I remember also a night on
Central Park, a stag night, when it was raining convulsively and Binder,
Bradbury, Hornig, Rocklynne and Darrow all clambered into a rocking boat
and swished out onto the glittering water, yodeling popular tunes at the
way-way top of their corny contraltos. Binder has a pleasing bath-tub
baritone, while Hornig can imitate a frog at the drop of a body. Darrow
was strangely silent, but that man Bradbury and Rocklynne set up such a
howl that the Park authorities came out in a submarine, thinking that
the Loch Ness monster had turned up again. This was all settled when
someone pulled the plug and everyone drowned peacefully.
Going way back in the cobwebs I seem to recall a letter arriving at an
Eastern post-office addressed to Mars. It was returned marked:
Insufficient Postage.
As I remember Charlie Hornig wrote, on January 9th: "On Tuesday,
February 20th, 1940, I'll be in Los Angeles. I will write for Futuria
Fantasia, but my rates are 12 cents a word, before acceptance. I haven't
seen GONE WITH THE WIND yet, but if I stop off to see it on the road,
expect me two days later than heretofore planned. If I walk it, expect
me at the city limits on the R car-line, Whittier, the same time of the
morning, only about 18 months later. I'll bring my overcoat and shovel
along for the annual sun showers and orange blizzards." And later, from
Hornig: "I liked the latest issue of Futuria Fantasia very much,
especially the page of conventional descriptions over which I laughed
myself sick and silly. The note about Bradbury and the mask and the
blonde in the Paramount is the funniest thing I've ever read in a
fan-mag."
I seem to remember being at someone's house not so long ago and glancing
thru a thick manuscript under submission to John W. Campbell. I seen to
remember that the author was Robert A. Heinlein, member of our LaSfl.
And the other day that story popped up in Astounding as a Nova, "IF THIS
GOES ON--" And it seems to me that here and now Bob should take a bow
for a swell story. And thanks to Campbell for providing it with a Rogers
cover and Rogers interiors. OMEGA----
* * * * *
_COMING in MAY_
"DARKNESS AND DAWN"